


the art of gift giving

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fenera Mahariel, Fluff, the earring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 15:06:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7689223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For zevwarden week, day five: "the earring." Mahariel gives Zevran gifts, and he gives her something in return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the art of gift giving

**Author's Note:**

> brief, non-graphic ref. to past abuse/torture

The first: gold. Solid bars that are heavy in his hand, but that slip easily into pockets. _I’ve no use for them,_ she says, but he knows differently. Pack and gear salvaged from near fatal-fights, weapons and food quite the same. They would hardly call the other _comrade_ and yet she stuffs jewelry and trinkets and coin in his bag. _When this is done, when I am gone, what will you do? Where will you go?_ She doesn’t ask and he doesn’t tell. The Crows are a question still unanswered and she would miss him if he left; he might miss her as well—perhaps that is why he does not heft his gold-filled pack and leave.

The second: silver. Not silently slipped into bags or pockets, but placed carefully in his hands. _You will need all the help you can get,_ she says. But she means _have all the help I can give._ To a shopkeeper or a safehouse or a farmer, these are equal in weight and lesser in value. To Zevran, they are far more. The gold glistens in the sunlight and it is blinding, the light and the fortune both. But the silver carries her reflection, the soft smile—the first smile—she offered him, the care in her voice despite her protests. The silver carries these things even when she is gone; he sees her there, in the evenings, when he looks. _My dear Warden, I do believe you are growing to care for me, hmm?_

The third: boots. Not quite the thick smell of Antivan leather, but still sharp all the same. He thinks of home, of rain falling all year long—heavy drops that fill the air with the smell of wet, hot stone. He thinks of baskets hanging from doorways and arches, of window boxes and small garden plots, rich with tomatoes and herbs and mint. He thinks of wildflowers fighting through the paving stones, growing throughout the cities, and of fishers along the docks knotting nets and stringing lines and boarding ship, their spouses waving goodbye and plying a trade in their absence, the smell of fish at market, fruit. He thinks of falling into the dark, both above and below a mark, of the power and the familiarity and the challenge. _To remind you of home,_ she says. But they remind him of her.

The fourth: gloves. _You will have me all in leather soon,_ he teases. _Perhaps that was the plan all along?_ She grins, wide and happy and genuine. It would be silly to wonder if these were the same gloves, if these ever touched his mother’s hands. But like his mother, these gloves are given to him from the Dalish. They share something, at least; perhaps they passed one another. Somehow. He rests against her and she tells him of the Dalish—of _her_ Dalish—and runs her fingers through his hair. He sleeps, dreams of her hands fletching arrows and carving halla’s horns and, even in sleep, running soft and sincere through his hair.

The fifth: his. An earring, scuffed with age and weighted with every life he has taken over the years. There are none who know him, who have seen every part of him, like this piece of tarnished gold. But the docking of pointed ears is not so uncommon a practice for her to have escaped it and when he presents his gift, her fingertips brush the ghost of a tip. Memories he is not yet privy to play across her face and at first, she doesn’t take it. He has made a mistake, he should not have—there are words, yes, but he still does not quite trust them, he still does not quite trust himself. _It has meant a lot to me, but so have..._ She takes it, hands warm against his own, and presses it into her ear, a piercing left untouched for longer than he has known her. _So have you, Zevran._

The sixth, the best, truly the only one that really matters: when it is over, she returns to him.


End file.
